Before I lived in Canada, I lived in Thailand. I lived in a village called Mae Ra Mo. I remember the houses were made out of bamboo and the roofs were made out of banana leaves. I also remember growing vegetables. My parents used to tell me that in Burma the soldiers would burn all the vegetables that they grew and they have to start all over.
I was about seven years old when I came to Canada. It was somewhere in summer. In Vancouver, I remember going to the beach. The water looked so clean and nice. I thought that it would taste like water but it didn’t, it was very salty.
Now that I live in Canada, whenever I look at old photos in Thailand it doesn’t look the same of how it looks like to me when I lived there. When I was younger it felt like there wasn’t a lot of trees but now when I look at photos in Thailand, I see lots and lots of trees.
Sometimes when I don’t want to wear something, my mom tells me that she didn’t have clothes like that to wear when she was younger. She told me that she learned to cook when she was a girl. She had to gather food for her family. She would compare to me because I can’t cook. She tells me that I have so many opportunities that she didn’t have. My mom would tell me about how Burmese soldiers would come to her village and burn the houses. She said that they would kill anybody that tries to escape. She would tell me that she had to work very hard. Even though she is telling me these things so I will act good, it is also the time when I can learn about her life.
In Langley, I go to church every Sunday. Almost everybody there speaks Karen. I also go to Karen school every Saturday from 1 to 3pm. I know about my people, my culture, and my language. I can remember in many ways about the country I lived in.